


the consequences of love

by Jaime



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 20:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19775701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaime/pseuds/Jaime
Summary: Ser Arthur has always been one of few men with the ability to make Jaime feel ashamed of himself. Sometimes, Jaime asks himself why that is—and he realizes the answer when his idol is the one to find him atop the Iron Throne, a king's corpse at his feet.





	the consequences of love

**Author's Note:**

> An AU from an Arthur/Jaime shipper of the conversation that might have occurred had Ser Arthur been the one to find Jaime sitting on the Iron Throne with King Aerys' corpse at his feet.
> 
> I have not written fanfiction in _years_ , but with some encouragement from friends to be self-indulgent, I'm utilizing my AO3 account. Excuse British/American spelling inconsistencies, as I'm Scottish, and enjoy the one-shot of me dipping my toes back into the water.
> 
>  **Content warning** for mentions of non-con, though none actually occurs in the fic.

He isn’t sure why he sits on the Iron Throne, but he does.

Perhaps it’s because he isn’t sure where else to go. Perhaps it’s because he has nowhere else _to_ go. Aerys’ corpse lies on the floor, eyes glassy as the floor stains red beneath him. It drips from Jaime’s sword too, held beside the throne with the point balanced on the floor. Red and gold, the Lannister colors.

Father will be proud if he walks through the door.

No—Father will call him a reckless fool and curse him, probably. Perhaps he’ll turn away and leave Jaime to the consequences. Again.

Jaime stares at the body, wondering—should he find Aegon, or Viserys, place one of them on the throne? It seems only proper, but then he thinks of Aerys wringing his scabbed hands and ranting of winter; so afraid of the cold coming for him that he would rather burn, setting the walls of the Red Keep alight with wildfire.

Aegon is a babe, too small to display any signs of madness or greatness, but Viserys is a bratty thing. He makes demands of Jaime and the other Kingsguard already and when he mistakes hesitation for insolence, he pushes his bottom lip forward and says, _I am a prince, and you will do as I say._

And he’s fucking _seven_.

Jaime quickly decides against that idea. Leave it to the Gods to decide who should sit on the throne. 

It seems an age before the door to the throne room is thrown open. Jaime sits with one leg atop the other, hand still on the hilt of his sword and he forces a grin into place. He feels like a puppet master with poor control over its subject, quirking his lips upwards with the tug of strings he’s not yet practiced with. 

The room is long, but there is no mistaking who stands at the other end. The knight approaches him with slow steps, each of them far steadier than Jaime feels. His fingers wrap more tightly around his sword, an anchor, and his eyes dart down to the king. The previous king.

He says nothing as Ser Arthur Dayne approaches, but watches.

Arthur stops yards from the throne and surveys the situation. Calm and collected as ever, he seems undisturbed, but Jaime knows better than to trust an expression. He, too, might have seemed undisturbed in the face of something awful—rotting flesh sizzling, the screams of men dying in agonizing pain, the pleas for help of a woman from Aerys’ bedroom. But he was never as calm as he felt. Arthur is too good a man to be truly calm now. Too loyal.

Aerys did not deserve him. Now, Jaime thinks bitterly, Rhaegar didn’t either.

When it becomes apparent Arthur is not going to speak first, surveying Aerys as if waiting for him to stand, Jaime forces himself to.

“Prince Rhaegar said you were with Lyanna.”

Arthur takes a moment to look up. His expression has always been… sad. Not quite as deeply depressed as Rhaegar, but with a loneliness behind his eyes. Or has Jaime always imagined that?

“I was. I was called back. Lyanna is protected still.” Jaime does not ask who sent for him—Aerys, Rhaegar, it matters not. “It seems I did not return in time.”

“It seems to me you returned at the right time,” Jaime corrects him. “You’ll be here to see who comes to claim the throne. I wonder who it will be? Robert Baratheon, Prince Rhaegar?” _My father?_ Jaime would put nothing past Lord Tywin, if he thought himself to be the best candidate.

“It seems,” Arthur says slowly, “That you have already claimed it.”

Jaime glances to his side. The blades of the Iron Throne twist outwards, reaching for him. No wonder Aerys was always cutting himself on the fucking thing.

“No,” he says bluntly, standing. His legs feel weak—he hasn’t slept or eaten in days. Aerys wouldn’t let him, wanted him by his side constantly. And Aerys didn’t sleep or eat either. “I don’t want it. I was only keeping it warm for the next king.”

Arthur doesn’t seem to have expected that. He frowns, and his lips part slightly as Jaime descends the steps and steps distastefully over the corpse, but he says nothing for a moment.

“Prince Rhaegar will execute you for this,” he says as Jaime reaches the bottom.

“I know.” Jaime has thought about that. He’s been left sitting on that chair for hours, with nothing to do but ponder the consequences of his actions. “Robert Baratheon may too.” _If my father can’t persuade him otherwise. If he even tries._ His only regret would be that Rossart and the other pyromancers would be free to run, wildfire caches still buried. He thinks about telling Arthur, but what good would it do? Arthur wouldn’t hunt down and execute anyone if the orders didn’t come from a king.

_Pious prick._

“You will deserve it,” Arthur says quietly. There’s no real venom to the words, but a deep disappointment that shakes Jaime. Any attempts at a forced smirk are effectively vanquished—Arthur can cut just as deeply with words as he can with a blade. “You have committed regicide.”

“Yes. I slit his throat.” Jaime doesn’t look at Aerys any more, but he can’t look at Arthur either. He settles for staring straight ahead. “A far more merciful death than he offered any of his victims.”

“Not victims, ser. Rebels. Conspirers against—”

“He’s dead.” Jaime has never interrupted Arthur before, but he can’t stand that monotonous, robotic speech that even Arthur doesn’t sound like he actually believes at this point. “You don’t have to be loyal to him.”

Although Jaime can’t bring himself to look at Aerys any more, Arthur can. He steps around Jaime and ascends three steps to get a better look at the body splayed half-way down. “I am still part of his Kingsguard,” he says quietly. “And I failed him.”

“He failed the whole kingdom,” Jaime replies. 

He faces away from Arthur and the throne.

“You should never have been introduced to the Kingsguard,” Arthur says from behind him. He sounds angry, his characteristic calmness beginning to dissipate. _Good. Fuck the self-righteous fool._ “You were never suited for it. Moral judgments are not ours to make, much less to do something about.”

“You were the one who knighted me,” Jaime replies haughtily.

There’s silence for a moment and then Arthur speaks, quieter again but still audibly frustrated.

“I never said you weren’t a good knight, Jaime. But you were a terrible Kingsguard. They are not one and the same.”

It’s the wrong thing to notice, trivial and insignificant, but Jaime has never heard Arthur use his name before. _Jaime._ It’s a reminder of who he is—not a nameless Lannister for Aerys to bargain with, not _Tywin’s son_ , but just _Jaime_. He’s been _Ser Jaime Lannister of the Kingsguard_ far too long. He was that man every time he watched Aerys burn someone alive, that man at Harrenhal. But when he dragged his sword across Aerys’ neck, he was _Jaime_ once more.

It feels good to be Jaime. 

“And there’s the whole problem,” he mutters. “I could never be good at both. None of us could.”

“Being a Kingsguard should have taken precedent. It always takes precedent.”

Jaime finally turns. Arthur is standing next to Aerys’ corpse as if he might be able to protect it still, the sadness and anger on his face deepening. 

“I don’t quite understand your problem,” Jaime says coolly. “Your friend Rhaegar can finally be king. He’ll be a much better one than Aerys. You can be loyal to a king you’re actually proud of. You can be a knight and a Kingsguard again.”

Perhaps Arthur is as exhausted as Jaime feels. He sits one step down from Aerys’ body and runs a hand across his face. There’s grief written into every line of his expression, and after a moment, he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes. 

“I am not… personally affected by Aerys’ death,” Arthur says. Always careful to keep any expression of emotions mild, that one. “But I regret that you killed him.”

Jaime doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s finding himself speechless too often these days—a once-rare occurrence for someone with a smart remark hidden halfway up his sleeve at any given moment.

“Rhaegar is… proper. A much better man than Aerys, but proper. He will have you tried, and he will be right to, but it is not something I wished to ever see.” Arthur does not lift his head from his hands, voice muffled. It’s the least composed Jaime’s ever seen him, though it’s still relatively composed by any normal person’s standards. “You were a good knight. Surprising, from the son of Tywin Lannister, but you were truly good. Had you been given ten more years…” 

Jaime can count the number of times Arthur has complimented him on one hand. And even then, it’s a comment about a sparring match with one of the squires, or a surprisingly good kill in battle back before he was stuck as Aerys’ Kingsguard. 

But it’s also rather a back-handed compliment to hear— _you will be executed and rightly so, but it’s such wasted potential_ —so Jaime doesn’t thank him. 

“I idolized you, before this,” he says instead, watching Arthur.

“I know you did.”

“You were brilliant. Truly, I wanted to be as good as you one day.” Jaime shakes his head. “But then I heard Rhaella raped again and again, and I saw decent men burning… fire is my champion. Horse shit. An excuse for a sadist to watch people die that, rightly so, didn’t agree with him.” He’s growing angry, a fire sparking in his stomach and beginning to burn. “And we all stood by and watched it happen, and my respect for you and the White Bull and Barristan Selmy was left in ruins. And so was my respect for myself.”

“If it’s any consolation,” Arthur says, “So was mine.”

“No, it’s not really any fucking consolation.” Jaime’s voice is rising, and in one furious movement, he raises the hand still holding a bloodied sword and throws it down on the ground. It lands with a tremendous clatter, but Arthur doesn’t even flinch. Jaime wants to shake him. “What is consolation is dying knowing I left the world a better place than I found out. With a better king. And fuck you for not trying to do the same.”

He’s gone too far, he thinks. He’s seventeen and a grown man now, a Kingsguard—ex-Kingsguard—but shouting at Ser Arthur Dayne is still rather like shouting at Lord Tywin Lannister. A man to be respected, even feared, his gut twists as the echoes of his words die around the throne room. 

Arthur raises his head and considers Jaime with an absolutely unfathomable expression and gets to his feet slowly. For one wild moment, Jaime wonders if he’s going to hit him—or perhaps cut him down. His muscles tense, and he braces himself.

Arthur stops in front of him and puts a hand on each of his armored shoulders.

“I hope you live,” he says. “I hope that you survive this.”

They know the chance is low. Arthur is so close to him that Jaime can practically see every hair in his beard, every fleck of a lighter color in his dark eyes. His heart beats against his ribcage, a war drum sounding hours too late. The churning of his stomach is not unfamiliar—Cersei’s made it do that many, many times—but it is unsettling.

“I think the world would be a darker place without you in it.”

Jaime cocks an eyebrow, trying—not for the first time tonight—to seem more confident than he feels. “It will be a shame for Westeros to lose one of their flashes of Lannister gold—”

“Not Lannister gold, Jaime. It will be a darker place without _you_.”

Jaime stares at Arthur, too close to him. “I idolized you,” he says, dazed—did he say that already? He’s tired. He’s sleep-deprived. He just killed a fucking king. Suddenly, he can barely focus.

“I know.”

Didn’t Arthur say that before?

“I think I…”

Jaime can’t finish that sentence. He only knows that only one other person could have made him feel the way Arthur did when he walked through the door, ashamed and devastated and barely able to keep up his façade. But he’s only ever said those words to Cersei.

Arthur can’t possibly predict the end of that sentence, but he says, “I know,” again.

And somehow, Jaime thinks he does.

The doors open behind him and Arthur’s hands drop from his shoulders as if the white cloak there burned him.


End file.
